


Asystole

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Zelda Ryder has difficulty coping after a harrowing experience on the Archon's ship.  Vetra Nyx offers to lend a shoulder.  Or an ear.  Or whatever.Spoilers up through the Archon's ship.





	Asystole

Zelda Ryder leaned back against her seat in the shuttle, closing her eyes, the breath burning in her chest.  Dammit, she was tired.  Unconsciously she rubbed at her chestpiece with a trembling hand, trying to massage away the burn.   **  
**

She’d died.  Again.  

Two Pathfinders had met their death on that ship.  How come she was the one walking away?

Liam made a joke, something with a thin veneer of normalcy that rang in her ears.  She could tell he felt lost underneath the glibness; so did she.  Jaal’s cool huff of acknowledgement weighed the joke down, killing it quickly.  

She didn’t blame him.  She didn’t feel much like laughing either.

***

Lexi’s face was a study.  If Ryder hadn’t been so tired she almost might have found it funny.  

“ _SAM killed you_ ,” she spat, her normally composed features a mess of horror and dismay.  Her hands were cool against Ryder’s cheeks, as she checked the whites of her eyes, the lymph nodes along her jawline.  Her omnitool flashed, recording her findings.

Ryder had thought about being a doctor, once; it had been that or xenoarchaeology, and she’d taken the initial courses for both.  She’d been in her first year of medical school when she heard the Alliance was establishing archeology units, and she’d never looked back.  But every once in a while things would trickle in, bits of memory that reminded her of the fresh-faced biology nerd she’d been at nineteen.  Lymph nodes.  She remembered humans had tons of the things.

Lexi’s stern look of disapproval snapped her out of her wandering thoughts.  She felt oddly defensive.  “He brought me back,” Ryder pointed out   “And he asked first.”

“Pathfinder Ryder is correct,” SAM concurred, using their public channel.  “It was the only way to disable the Archon’s biological shackles.  We both agreed.”

“That is _entirely_ too much power to hand over to an AI,” said Lexi, eyes narrowed.  Ryder had never seen her so angry, her mouth a thin tight line.  “And look at the state of you!”

“I’m fine,” said Ryder, even though she felt she’d been hit with a krogan war hammer.  She tried to muster up a winning smile.  It came out something like a grimace.

“You’re experiencing profound adrenal fatigue,” said Lexi.  “It’s a miracle your cardiac rhythms reestablished as well as they did.  Even with SAM’s adjustments of your system – which admittedly have left you in a far better state than anyone who has experienced a natural heart attack – you’re still quite fragile right now.  You were utterly without oxygen for more than sixty seconds, and it’s _showing_.  I want you to rest up strictly for the next three days, and we can reassess then.  We can discuss SAM then, too.”  

She sat down next to Ryder, and put a hand on her shoulder.  The worried wrinkles in her forehead shifted subtly into sadness.  “You scared me, Ryder.”

“Yeah,” said Ryder after a moment.  “Scared me too.”

***

Ryder stared at her bed.  It looked stark, somehow.  Usually she charged into her room and flopped down, grateful to have somewhere soft to sleep that wasn’t a cryo pod.  Tonight the bed seemed somehow ominous.

_I could go to sleep, and not wake up._

The realization made her heart stutter, and she hissed out a breath, willing herself to settle down.  She’d tried to take Lexi’s advice to take it easy.  There was so much more she wanted, needed to do, but she’d restrained herself to a few conversations.  She’d done the minimum in communicating with Drack and the Nexus about his scouts.  She’d taken Kallo aside and told him, hollow-voiced, that she was sorry about Raeka.  She’d eaten a dinner of protein pastes mechanically, sticking to something easy to digest.

But her heart still felt like a stranger in her own body, and she sat down on the edge of the bed, staring balefully at the pillows.

“SAM,” Ryder said, subvocalizing; SAM could pick up the half-words she could form under her breath.  It felt strange to talk to him more loudly when it was only the two of them.  “Is there anything… am I okay?”

_Zelda, I understand you must be concerned,_ said SAM, as soothingly as he could. _I remember how I became disoriented when I encountered that virus in SAM node.  I felt as if I could not trust my own code.  It took some time to reassure myself that I was, in fact, myself.  Is that an adequate analogy?_

“It’s something like that,” said Ryder.  “My heart… you’re sure it’s all right?”  She bit her lip.  “Argh, I feel stupid even asking.  Even worrying about it.”

_Between my own readings, and Dr. T’Perro’s, I judge you have suffered no permanent injury.  However, I agree with her assessment that rest would be ideal._

“I’ll try, SAM.”  She tried to believe his assessment, telling herself it would make her feel better.

But it wasn’t easy to believe when she remembered that pressure, crushing, all-consuming, all-encompassing, bearing on her chest; nor the way black particles danced in at the edges of her vision; nor the sudden air hunger  that had roared, if only for a few seconds, in every cell of her body.

She thought of being a little kid, up on the top bunk back when she and Scotty had still shared a room.  They’d been tiny then, five or six, and usually she’d tried to lord it over him as the oldest, pretending nothing ever scared her.  But when it had, there was nothing better than crawling down into the lower bunk and hiding under the covers with him.  He’d try to make fun of her about it sometimes, but sometimes he crawled up to the top bunk with her, too; fair was only fair.

Tears pricked her eyes.  Scotty was still in the cryo-bay, no more responsive than the bed he lay on.  She hadn’t even had the courage to tell him about Dad yet, even though he couldn’t hear her.  She didn’t know which of them could use the biggest hug.

Great.  Now she was thinking about Dad again, too.  She pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes, and hoped that she could rest.

***

She gave sleep a chance, she really did.

She tried a number of positions.  On her side, the classic fetal position.  Normally a beloved go-to.  Failed after thirty minutes of wondering if she might choke on her own saliva laying like that.

Lying on her back wasn’t any better.  She remembered that old movie, one her mom had liked.   _The Elephant Man._  The man had choked to death because of his profound deformities and suffocated in his sleep.  It was enough to make her roll over to her stomach, but then she wondered if she would have trouble expanding her lungs while laying on her chest, and she was back at square one.

She wondered about asking Lexi for something to help her sleep.  Yet what if a sedative suppressed her respiratory reflex to a point it was dangerous – no, she figured, she’d better not.

Someone telling her she was fine sounded nice in theory, but was not working in practice.  SAM had tried, but SAM had also made her not-fine, and while she trusted him, cared for him, it was still more complicated than she liked.  Lexi had tried too, but Lexi was probably sleeping comfortably by now, and Ryder didn’t want to wake her when part of her knew she was simply being anxious.

What she wanted was for someone to stay with her and really make sure she would be fine.

She sat up in bed, resting her arms on her knees and her chin on her forearms.  After a few minutes she rolled out from the covers and pulled on her pants and sweatshirt, working her toes into the comfy shoes she wore around the ship.  Maybe a walk would help.

She thought vaguely of the bio lab.  Plants, Andromedan, Terran, heck, there was even a spindly little metallic succulent from Palaven.  The air did feel fresher there, despite the fact it was recycled throughout the ship, and maybe the greenery would help anchor her in a way the stars did not tonight.

Deep in thought she scarcely noticed Vetra coming around the bend, and ran straight into her, bouncing off the light armor Vetra wore on the ship.  “Shit!” Ryder spat, rubbing her aching nose.  She didn’t usually mind having a larger than average nose, but hitting it on a turian breastplate was simply embarrassing.  Especially _this_ turian’s.  Her cheeks felt hot.

“Uh, hey, Ryder,” said Vetra, clearly trying not to laugh.  Ryder supposed she ought to be grateful for that, at least.

“What are you still doing up?” she asked, letting her hand drop back to her side.  Her nose didn’t seem to be broken, at least.

“Winding down for the night,” said Vetra.  “Had a few calls to take.  Trying to get things sorted for Drack’s scouts; I told him I’d pull some favors.  Some of them are going back to the Nexus, but a few want to get to Kadara, or Elaaden.”  She tilted her head to one side, studying Ryder’s face.  “Look.  About what happened back there… you made a hard choice.”

Ryder swallowed past the lump in her throat.  “I couldn’t…”  She tried to sort out the words in her head, figure out how to say it.  “– the idea of exaltation – I didn’t want them to go through that.”  She twisted her hands together.  “I knew I was going to lose Raeka, too.  There wasn’t enough time.”

“Hey,” said Vetra.  She reached out, touching Ryder’s shoulder for a moment.  Her hand was solid there, even though the shape was different, new.  Ryder wished she could lean into it, could take that hand in her own, but she tried to shake the feeling away.  

“You did the best you could,” said Vetra.  “I know you’re gonna blame yourself.  I would too.  But that doesn’t change that you had a hard choice, and you did what you could with it.”  She folded her arms against her chest.  “Is that why you’re still up?”

“Partly,” admitted Ryder.  Vetra’s words settled on her, a bit of balm against her anxious, jittering mind.  She tried to fix them in memory.  She suspected she might need to hear them again in the coming days.

“You look worried,” said Vetra.  “I can tell.”  A faint smile stole over her face, but it was kind.  That was one thing Ryder liked so much about her.  She talked straight, and she didn’t pull punches.  A human might have been tempted not to say anything at all.  Vetra said it plainly, and she meant it, every time.

“So,” she said.  “You’re an expert on humans now?”  She’d been… noticing Vetra for some time now.  She’d made some comments, here and there, and Vetra hadn’t refuted them.  But she was still unsure of where she stood.

“Didn’t say I was,” said Vetra smoothly.  “But I like to think I’ve gotten to know you pretty well.”

If Ryder hadn’t been blushing earlier from the nose debacle, she was now.  “Yeah, I guess you have.”  She rubbed at the back of her neck, suddenly self-conscious.  “You promise you won’t  think I’m overreacting?”

“I don’t know.  Depends on what you tell me,” Vetra answered, leaning against the wall as if settling in.

Ryder hesitated.  It was going to sound so damn childish out loud.  But it was the middle of the night, and nobody else was around, and she trusted Vetra.  

“I’m scared,” she said simply.  Her hand clutched at the front of her shirt, over her chest.  “There’s a part of me that worries if I go to sleep tonight, I won’t wake up.”

Vetra was quiet for a moment.  “Shit, Ryder.”  

“I know.  It’s stupid –”

“No, it isn’t.”  She stepped forward, the distance between them narrowing.  This close Ryder could see the fine texture of her skin on her throat, like supple leather; she wondered what it would feel like beneath her fingertips.  Her eyes behind her ever-present visor were keen, and Ryder gazed into them, unable to look away.

“You died?  That’s what it sounded like over the comms,” said Vetra quietly.  “And Jaal and Liam said that’s what happened.  But I didn’t want to believe it.”

Ryder nodded.  “SAM stopped my heart.  It was the only way.  I’m not upset with him.  SAM did what he had to, and it worked, but I’m scared it could happen on its own.  I’ve already died twice now in Andromeda.  I’m scared the third time will be the charm.”  She shivered.  “I know I”m worrying over nothing –”

“You aren’t.”  Her voice was rich, subharmonics thrumming beneath her words.  “I won’t tell you not to worry.  That never worked for me.  I still worry way too damn much no matter how much I tell myself it doesn’t help.  But I didn’t have any other plans tonight besides sleeping, so if talking might help… well… I’m here.”  Vetra spread her hands in front of her, the three fingers on each long palm splayed wide.  “If you need a shoulder.  Or an ear.  Or whatever.”

“I’d like that.”  She grinned suddenly.  Flirting… now, there was a distraction she could work with.  “If I could even reach your shoulder, that is.”

Vetra let out a sharp peal of laughter.  “Hey, it’s not my fault you’re so short.  It’s kind of cute, though.”

Ryder’s smile hitched to one side, and she swallowed.   _Oh, what the hell._ “So you think I’m cute?”

Vetra’s mandibles flared outward, as if she was lost for words.  Her eyes widened slightly.  “I – uh – sure.”

“That’s it?  Sure?”  She hoped desperately that SAM was sitting back, twiddling his virtual thumbs and whistling to himself instead of hearing her strike out so miserably.

Vetra, normally so unflappable, so calm, so her-shit-together, shifted uneasily from side to side, averting her gaze.  “What do you want me to say?”

_You’ve already died today, you aren’t allowed to die of embarrassment now._  “I was hoping that you might be interested,” said Ryder, steeling herself.  “Because I sure as hell am.”  She shrugged helplessly, fully aware that her cheeks blazed a radioactive red.  “I like you, Vetra, and I care about you, more than a friend or a crewmate.  If you still want to lend me a spiky shoulder to lean on, I’d really like that.”  She faltered.  “But if you aren’t interested in that –”

“No – I mean, yes.  I am.”  Were Vetra’s cheeks darker than before?  They held a pretty bluish hue that Ryder couldn’t remember seeing on her in the past.  “I have been for… a while.  I just didn’t want to be wrong.”

Ryder closed the distance between them.  She could feel the heat of the other woman against her bare arms.  She tilted her head back.  “Um.  Could you bend down a little?”

Vetra laughed.  “For you, yes.”  Her breath was soft on Ryder’s cheeks, and before Ryder could worry about how exactly one was supposed to kiss a turian, Vetra’s mouth was on hers, firm smooth edges surprisingly muscular and dynamic against Ryder’s lips.  Ah.  This was different: Vetra’s tongue rougher and shorter than she’d expected, the way the flexible plates of her cheeks and nose and forehead pressed against Ryder’s face.  

Vetra pulled back, nearly as violet as the tattoos on her cheeks.  “Was that okay?  I’ve never tried kissing a human before.”  She looked sheepish, somehow, but pleased.  “ _I_ liked it.”

Ryder ran a trembling hand through her hair.  “That was _awesome_.”  She sank against Vetra, giggling madly.  “Vetra, this has been one hell of a day.”

Vetra squeezed her shoulder.  “My original offer still stands, you know.  This wasn’t a ploy to seduce you.”  

“Not even a little?”

“That would be wrong,” said Vetra, quite nobly.

Ryder sighed, slipping her arms around the turian’s narrow waist.  “All right.  If it still stands, I would owe you one heck of a favor if you kept me company for a little bit.  At least until my head’s back on straight again.  We could chat in my quarters?”

“Of course.  And it’d probably be best to keep it to chatting instead of… other activities.  I think I overheard Lexi telling you you needed to take it easy the next few days.”

“As intriguing as other activities sound, I think I’d pass out in the middle from sheer exhaustion,” said Ryder, letting her arms fall from Vetra’s waist as they walked towards her quarters.  “But let’s keep that in mind for another day, yeah?”

“We’ll see how it goes, then,” said Vetra.  Ryder had never realized before a turian could look so sly.

Vetra whistled when Ryder opened the door into her quarters.  She’d not had occasion to invite anyone in before, usually preferring to find her crewmates in the common areas to talk.  “I saw these quarters back when the Tempest was drydocked, but it looks a hell of a lot better with the view.”

“Well… you want to come check it out sometimes, all you have to do is ask.”  The doors slid closed behind them and Ryder kicked her boots off.  “Do you want to make yourself, er, comfortable?  Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you in civilian clothes, just your armor.”  She clapped a hand over her mouth.  “Wait, are you wearing anything under there?”

Vetra laughed.  “Are you crazy?  Turians aren’t nearly as squishy as you humans, but we still wear underclothes under our armor.  We aren’t barbarians, Ryder.”

“It was an honest question,” she protested.  

Vetra grinned.  “Don’t worry, I know.”  She stretched, raising her arms above her, extending her already considerable height until her knuckles brushed the ceiling.  “Actually, it’s been a long day.  Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer.  I _am_ decent under here.”  She reached up and dismantled part of her armor around her neck, unclicking it.  A few more quick, efficient movements and she was pulling off her arm pieces, laying them in a neat stack by the door.  Her chestplate and boots followed.  Underneath the armor she indeed wore a thin cloth garment with long sleeves, similar to what Sid always wore but plainer.  The skin of her cowl peeked out around the edge of her overshirt, with a faint silvery sheen beneath the overhead lights.  

She padded over to the couch on long, slightly curved toes and narrow feet, then plopped down as if she was perfectly comfortable.  “That does feel better.”

Ryder pulled off her sweatshirt, exposing the thin camisole she wore underneath.  She took the other end of the couch, sitting curled up with her feet on the cushions.  “It’s like a slumber party.”  

“Is that what I think it is?” Vetra asked with a tilted head and a grin.

Ryder chuckled.  “Well, it can be.  But it’s also something we used to do as kids.  Scotty and I didn’t have a lot of friends on the Citadel, since we traveled a lot, but we still sometimes had friends spend the night.  I always hated it when it was his turn to have friends over.  The boys would always try to play tricks on me… at least until I punched one of them in the nose.  After that they thought I could do no wrong.”

Vetra looked skeptical.  “That’s a thing?  Kids staying at each other’s houses?  Did they have parents?”

“Of course.  Usually the parents would be glad to get the kids out of their hair.  Figuratively speaking, I guess.  I had a few asari friends.  Scott was friends with a salarian boy for a while.  Not a lot of hair going on there.”

“It is strange how you humans have so much of it.  And all of you do something different with it,” said Vetra.  “Always thought that was kind of weird.”  She gave Ryder a long, appraising look.  “I like yours.  It’s shiny, and it always looks soft, even when you’ve stuffed it into a helmet.  It’s kind of impressive.”

“Helmet hair is no laughing matter,” said Ryder, pleased at the compliment.  “But I do miss having slumber parties sometimes; they really were fun.  The conversations were the best.”

“In my experience, kids aren’t the best conversationalists.  With Sid it was a lot of asking for food, throwing tantrums, making butt jokes…”

“Good to know those are universal,” Ryder giggled.  “Well, I was a kid too at the time.”  She ruffled her hair with one hand.  She supposed it was soft.  “But you’ve had that feeling before, right?  Night does funny things to most people.  You get sillier.  You talk about scarier stuff.  You share things.”  Ryder leaned back, tilting her head back so she could see the stars swirling past the window.  “I always loved that.”

Vetra stretched out her long legs, curling and uncurling her toes in the thin rug under the couch.  “There’s a little truth in that, I think.”  She reached out, taking Ryder’s hand, and sighed.  It took them a second to figure out the best configuration of three and five.  “Feels good.  I’ve wondered what that would feel like for a while now.”

“Likewise,” Ryder said, squeezing her hand.  She edged closer to Vetra on the couch until her toes nudged Vetra’s thigh.  “Something about you being impossibly tall and willowy and asskicking appealed to me right from the start.”

“Willowy?” Vetra snorted.  “Isn’t that a tree?”

“Well, yes.  It’s a compliment.  And you are _super_ tall, if you haven’t noticed.  Which I like.”

“I’m not tall,” said Vetra dismissively.  “Everyone else is ridiculously short.  Anyway, I think the first time you flirted with me I thought you were joking.  And the second.  And the third.”

“Oh god.”  Ryder hung her head.  “That is embarrassing.  For both of us.”  They laughed, and for a moment, she let herself luxuriate in butterflies and silliness, in that heady feeling of electricity in their grip.  Maybe there was a lot of scary shit out there, but here, with Vetra, she felt a little safer.

She squeezed Vetra’s hand.  “Glad you’re here, Vetra.  Heleus is a crazy place, but you help me make sense out of it.”

“I just show up and shoot things,” said Vetra mildly.  But she squeezed back, and impulsively leaned forward, brushing a kiss against Ryder’s cheek.  “Glad you’re here, too.”  She settled herself back against the couch.  “Especially on days like today.  When the weight of everything that’s out there makes itself known again.”

“I keep wondering,” Ryder said slowly.

“Keep wondering what?”

“Why the kett want what they want.  Why they’re so convinced of their superiority.  Trying to exalt krogan… I thought learning about the angara was bad.  But the krogan… the salarians… those were our people they were experimenting on.”  Ryder felt ill, remembering the bodies, the tanks.

“It’s bullshit.  I can’t imagine what they’d do with a turian.  If a kett ever even so much as _looked_ at Sid….”  Her grip on Ryder’s hand tightened.

“I’m not gonna let that happen.  I’m not.”  She leaned her head back against the couch, closing her eyes.  “But I don’t know everything, either.  Maybe there was another way I could’ve helped Raeka.  And the Archon had us, Vetra.  Until SAM –”  Her other hand scrabbled, reflexively, against the front of her shirt.  

“Hey, hey.”  Vetra’s voice was a soft, layered murmur.  “Lexi said you were okay.”

_Zelda_ , said SAM into her private channel.   _Your heartbeat is still regular.  I detect no arrhythmias or lasting damage from my actions.  I apologize for the distress you now feel._

“SAM says I’m okay, too,” Ryder said, her eyes still closed.  She slowly lowered her hand from her chest.  “But it’s disquieting.  To remember, _again_ , that I could be only a minute away from death.”

“I only heard rumors about before,” said Vetra, looking concerned.  “Habitat seven.  That was where they lost the human Pa– your dad, right?”

“It was him or me,” she said simply.  “I’d damaged my helmet too badly in a fall.  Atmo was toxic.  Dad gave me his helmet instead, and told SAM to start the upload.  He picked me.”  Her mouth twisted.

“You never talk about him.”

“He was a hard man to get along with,” said Ryder.  “A hard man in general.  He didn’t really have a grip on the whole emotions thing.  He didn’t understand why I’d get so upset about things.  Being a teenager with him around was fun.”  She laughed, but it wasn’t really funny.

“Why did you come to Andromeda?  You ask everyone else, but you keep your own reasons close to the chest.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“You notice a lot of things, Vetra.”  

“I’m sneaky like that.”

“He wanted to explore, I knew that much.  And there was a lot that went wrong in the Milky Way.  His work on SAM got him blacklisted from everything humanity was doing in Citadel space, and some of that backlash hit Scotty and me, too.”  The way her fieldwork dried up; the transfers; the steady, persistent, faceless pressure brought on her to move on.  Scotty had dealt with the same.  “And after Mom died, there was something powerful about looking forward to getting away, as far as we possibly could.  It didn’t feel like we could move forward back home,” she said, faltering.

“I didn’t know about your mom,” said Vetra.  “You look sad, talking about her.  You were close, weren’t you?”

“Much more than with Dad.  But she got sick a few years ago.”  Ryder let out a long breath.  “She would have liked a lot of this place.  She would have loved meeting the angara.  She was passionate, like Jaal.”

“I’m always impressed by people who were close with their mothers,” said Vetra quietly  “I know ours didn’t want us.  She put up with us for a while, but even so, I barely remember her.”

“You want to know something funny?”

“Shoot.”

“Every now and then, I catch myself thinking, _Dad would love this_ ,” said Ryder.  Her face scrunched, nose wrinkling.  “And then it catches up to me.  I realize, I don’t really know what he would have liked.  You know?”  She shrugged, inching closer to Vetra.  “I can guess.  Part of me can extrapolate the things he would probably like from the things I know he cared about.  Exploration.  SAM.  Family.  In that order.”  She sighed.  “But when I think of what he would like, I realize I’m thinking of my projection of him; the man I used to wish he would be, the man nostalgia makes him out to be.  It’s like that with everyone we’ve lost, isn’t it?  The best parts of them – or the worst – they’re all our biology lets us remember eventually, and we build up these visions of them as a way to comfort ourselves.  It’s like we still have a relationship with them, just a little, if we can imagine who they’d be now and what they’d do.  Love, but at a remove.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Vetra after a moment.  “I never wasted time worrying about my mother, after she left.  But I like to tell myself my dad died a hero, a good man, back in the Milky Way.  That he would have come back for Sid and me if he could have.”  Her mandibles flared open in a long, trembling pause before folding against her cheeks again.

“Do you think that really happened?” Ryder asked quietly.  “A hero’s death?”

“No,” Vetra said flatly.  “I think –”  She bowed her head.  “I think he was good enough that he might have _wanted_ to come back to us.  But I don’t think he was good enough to do it, in the end.”  

“I think Dad would have wanted to love Andromeda,” said Ryder.  “And yet, each new outpost, each new secret… it’d never be enough.  He could never be happy with what he had.  He was only ever happy in the striving for it, I think.”

_A wise, if painful, observation,_ said SAM into her private channel.  His voice was especially reserved.   _I miss your father.  My experience of him was different than your own, but you did understand him, Zelda._

“Thank you, SAM,” she subvocalized.  She leaned back against the pillows, digging her shoulders into them, her heart steady in her chest.  Not dead yet.  Not again.

“Do we ever leave the old shit behind?” mused Vetra.  She gazed up at the stars drifting on the other side of the window, gold and silver pinpricks against the black.  “Or does it always come back like this to punch you in the gut?”

“Sometimes it hits hard, like it all happened yesterday.  Sometimes I almost forget for a day or two that Dad died.  I can never tell which it’s going to be until it comes.  That’s life all over, isn’t it?  You can guess and worry and wonder all you want about it, but it still does what it’s going to do, and you can’t always change that.”  The stars blurred.

“We can change some things,” said Vetra.  She reached out, pulling Ryder against her, draping an arm around her shoulders.  “The two of us against the world?  I don’t know.  I kinda like those odds, personally.”

Ryder curled up beside her, laying her head against Vetra’s chest.  She could hear a steady beat, a slightly different rhythm than she was used to, but familiar all the same.  She listened to the sound, closing her eyes.  Funny, but it made her think of a safe port in the storm.  An anchor.

“You _do_ know how to play the odds,” she laughed.  She could feel Vetra’s chuckle through her chest, and that was an anchor too.

***

“Morning, you,” said Vetra, and Ryder yawned.

The first thing she noticed was how stiff she was.  The second thing she noticed was that she was sprawled on the couch, her head and shoulders in Vetra’s lap.

“Morning,” she said, acutely aware that Vetra’s lap was surprisingly comfortable.  “How long was I asleep?”

“Long enough,” said Vetra, leaning down to meet her in a kiss.  It was an extraordinarily better way to wake up than the alarm tone SAM usually played.  “You made it through the night, you know.”

Ryder sat up, stretching, and let out a shaky laugh.  “You’re right.”  She nudged Vetra hard in the shoulder.  “Thanks to you.”

“Nah,” said Vetra.  “You had it under control.”  But something in her face softened.  “Glad you’re feeling better.”

Ryder pulled her into a clumsy hug, showering her in a flurry of kisses.  When she pulled back Vetra looked flabbergasted.  She also looked intensely pleased.

“So it wasn’t bad for our first slumber party?” Ryder asked.

“Well,” Vetra said, regaining her ability to speak, “I can’t really compare it to any others.  So we’ll obviously have to do this again.”

Ryder laughed.  It might have been a hell of a day yesterday.  But there was another one today, and hopefully another tomorrow, and one after that.  Moving forward was all any of them could do.  Moving forward with Vetra was even better.

_Good morning, Zelda.  Your heart rate and rhythm remain normal._

“Thanks, SAM.”  A deep breath.  “I know.”


End file.
